Is the "you won the lottery" message a scam?

What it looks like

Common variants, anonymized.

      Email: "CONGRATULATIONS! Your email address has won £820,000 in the UK National Online Lottery Promotion. To claim, contact our agent Mr. Daniel Smith with your full name, address, and a small processing fee of £450."
    

      Phone: "Hi, this is Mary from Publishers Clearing House. You've been selected for our $2.5 million prize and a new Mercedes. To send Prize Patrol to your home, we need you to pay the $1,200 tax in advance through gift cards."
    

      Inheritance: "I am Barrister Adekunle Williams. A client with your last name died intestate in Lagos leaving $11.4 million. As the only matching beneficiary, I can transfer the funds to your account once you cover the legal and bank charges of $3,800."
    

Other names you may see: Microsoft Lottery, Google Lottery, El Gordo, Spanish Lottery, Australian Lottery, Yahoo Lottery, Mega Millions winner notification. None of them run "email lotteries". None of them call winners out of the blue.

Red flags

How to spot it.

You did not enter. You cannot win a lottery you never played.
"Pay a fee, tax, or processing charge to release the prize." Real prizes do not require an up-front fee. Ever. Taxes on lottery winnings exist, but they are deducted from the prize or paid to your tax authority after you receive the money, never up front to a third party.
Payment by gift card, wire, crypto, or money order. No legitimate prize office uses these methods.
Urgency. "You must claim within 48 hours or the prize goes to another winner." Real winnings wait for you. Scammers cannot afford for you to slow down and verify.
Generic congratulations email with your address misspelled. A real prize agency knows who you are.
Foreign country in the story. Spanish lottery, Australian sweepstakes, Nigerian barrister. The geography is designed to make verification hard.
Asks for your bank details, ID copy, and signature to "process the transfer". This is identity theft on top of the original scam.

What to do

Do this instead.

Delete the message. Do not reply, do not click any link, do not call the number.
Mark it as spam. In Gmail or Outlook, mark as phishing so the platform improves filtering for the next person.
Forward suspicious texts to 7726 (SPAM) in the US and UK. Most carriers route these to a fraud team.
If you have already paid a fee, stop sending more. The "next fee" is always promised to be the last. It never is. Call your bank's fraud line if you paid by transfer or card. Report at your country's fraud agency (US: reportfraud.ftc.gov, UK: actionfraud.police.uk).
If you sent your ID, alert the credit bureaus and consider freezing your credit. The ID will be reused in synthetic identity fraud.

What not to do

Never do this.

Never pay a fee to "claim" a prize. Not in any currency, not for any reason.
Never send a copy of your ID to a "prize agent" or "barrister" you have never met.
Never give your bank details for a payment from a stranger. A legitimate transfer only needs the IBAN or account number, not your login credentials.
Never trust a "lawyer" with a free email address. A real attorney has a firm with a real domain and a verifiable bar registration.

Quick questions

FAQ.

The letter has an official-looking logo. Is that not proof?

No. Logos can be copied from any company's website in seconds. The Publishers Clearing House logo, Microsoft logo, and national lottery logos are all freely available online. A logo on a letter or email proves nothing.

What about Publishers Clearing House? They really do give out prizes.

PCH does run a real sweepstakes, but they never ask winners for a fee, tax, or any payment to claim a prize. They contact winners in person (the Prize Patrol) for major prizes, and never by random email or out-of-the-blue phone call asking for gift cards. If someone says they are from PCH and asks for any payment, it is a scam, period.

What if I really did inherit money from a distant relative?

Real inheritances are handled by real law firms with verifiable addresses, real probate court filings, and never require you to send money first. If there really is a relative leaving you money, you can verify the firm by calling them on a phone number you find independently (from the firm's official website, not from the email). Real inheritance disbursements come via bank transfer or check from a known legal trust account, after probate is complete.

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